World of Warcraft lost another 300,000 Subscribers last quarter, Patch 4.3 this year
Activision Blizzard latest earning call revealed that World of Warcraft lost another 300,000 subscribers last quarter, following the loss of 600k subscribers announced last quarter.

In this conference call we also learned that:

The next patch will include "major raid and dungeon content", we can most likely expect a raid and a 5-man from Patch 4.3

Patch 4.3 will be the "largest content update since Cataclysm"

It will be released later this year, which means that we can probably expect a PTR soon.

It's also worth noting that despite the loss of players, Mike Morhaime pointed out that the new trial system resulted in an increase in new account creations. For more details on the earning call, go check the coverage on sites such as Venturebeat or Gamasutra.

BlizzCon 2011 Virtual Ticket Now On Sale
The Blizzcon virtual ticket is now available, it seems that some people already got their Murkablo Companion Pet by buying the ticket early. (See this forum thread. However, this is most likely a bug and pets might be removed very soon.

Want to experience the panel discussions, tournaments, game-related announcements, and all the excitement of BlizzCon 2011 from the comfort of your own home? Then be sure to check out the BlizzCon Virtual Ticket!

The BlizzCon 2011 Virtual Ticket is now available for purchase around the world for $39.99 USD (pricing may vary by region). Virtual Ticket coverage will be available as a multi-channel Internet stream and also via Pay Per View on DIRECTV in the United States, granting viewers a front-row seat to all of the action on the show floor including exclusive interviews, demos, and more!

New DIRECTV subscribers in the United States who sign up for DIRECTV service between now and September 25 through www.directv.com/blizzcon will receive this year's BlizzCon Virtual Ticket coverage for free. Existing DIRECTV customers will be able to purchase the event on DIRECTV Pay Per View for $39.99 beginning Monday, October 10. Visit www.directv.com/blizzcon for more info.

DIRECTV customers who order the Pay Per View event through DIRECTV will receive the multi-channel Internet stream at no extra charge, and those who order the BlizzCon Virtual Ticket will also receive this year’s to-be-announced BlizzCon-exclusive World of Warcraft and StarCraft II in-game items.

Don't miss out! To learn more about the BlizzCon Virtual Ticket, head on over to our official BlizzCon 2011 Live Stream page or read the FAQ.

Cenarion Hatchling Raises More Than $1.9 Million for Japan Earthquake Relief

Originally Posted by Blizzard
(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Thanks to the overwhelming generosity of World of Warcraft players around the world who purchased the Cenarion Hatchling pet, we’ve raised a total of more than $1.9 million USD to support the ongoing earthquake and tsunami relief efforts in Japan. In May, we announced that for every Cenarion Hatchling purchased by July 31, 2011, 100% of the $10 USD adoption fee would be going to assist victims of this disaster -- and the community responded by opening up their hearts and wallets wide. Thanks again for your support and for helping to make an impact on the lives of those affected by these events.

The beta test approaches! We’ve just updated our System Check program and would like everyone to update their Battle.net Beta Profile information by running the new one. You should do this regardless of whether there have been hardware changes made to your system.

You can run the new System Check by visiting the Beta Profile settings of your Battle.net account:

I don’t have a Beta Profile
If you haven’t yet created a Beta Profile on your Battle.net account you’ll be presented with two download options, PC and Mac, for our System Check program. Running the program will present you with the Beta Test Opt-In Agreement, and once you agree to that it will immediately query basic computer specification information such as your type of video card, processor, and RAM. Clicking the Send button will then upload the shown information to your account.

On your Beta Profile page, you’ll want to ensure you at least have “Diablo Universe” checked for future testing, if not StarCraft and Warcraft as well. That’s it! You’re now eligible for future beta test opportunities.

I have a Beta Profile
If you’ve previously uploaded your system info you should use the links to download the new System Check program for PC or Mac and update your system info. Run the program, read through the Beta Test Opt-In Agreement that appears, and once you agree to that the program will immediately query your basic computer specification information. Click Send and the program will automatically update your profile with your system specifications. You’ll remain opted in for whichever beta tests you’ve previously selected, and you can change these selections on your Beta Profile page at any time.

Having current system specifications and checking the franchise boxes to express interest in beta testing our future products does not guarantee your entry into the beta test. We will grant a very limited number of people entry from the entire pool of those interested, based on their system specifications and other factors. While having an official Battle.net Beta Profile is one way to potentially get in, we’ll have information on other ways to increase your chances as we draw closer to the beta test.

Blue Posts

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

Lack of Blue Posts / "Where are the Blues?"
The whole team is here today. We're actively reading the forums whenever we can while working on other tasks. :)(Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Repair costs too expensive?
Repair costs have always scaled with item level. If anything, I'd say this game has a burden of too much gold out in the economy, rather than too little. 4 deaths in 1 5-player Heroic dungeon run is well above what you should expect as an average, and 100 gold is pretty easy to come by at level 85. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

New Warcraft Fan Art
The Blizzard Fan Art Section has been updated with five new pieces of fan artwork set within the Warcraft universe.

"The Raid" Livestream on August 6th @ 6:00PM PSTBlue Loon Films, the studio behind the upcoming World of Warcraft documentary, The Raid, has announced that the live stream of their film will take place on August 6th.

The Raid follows a guild over the course of a few months and features a host of content including in-game and at-home interviews with the players.

This is the mantra here to a vast majority of veterans leaving, not minor number discrepancies, not it being to hard or easy, not about obtain loot.

Its they need to do something new, they need more things to do. Stop with the generic raids and 5 mans, what is topping them from making a dungeon to whatever number they would enjoy or fit a place best? They could add in a lot of different things like group size changes, PvP changes, that are totally unrelated with class or balance, just purely content.

Blizzard lacks so freaking heavily in innovative content,they NEED to innovate, not respond, reply and elaborate with the stupid fools QQing about why their class can't be the most OP one and arguing other balance issues with total idiots on the forums. What they need to do is take time to review NEW ideas for the game, ones well laid out that have merit and not somebody's shitty class ideas, or some new way to role play, or singular ability for one's class, people aren't interested in that crap. They want the game they have played for a long time to be DYNAMIC.

The "trinity" system for one needs to be looked at heavily and the way threat and AI works I would think, at least for some content in game. They AI in this game is just so simple to deal with, to an experienced gamer and player of MMOs everything pretty much feels like a tank and spank if the boss targets only one or two people over 90% of the fight.

I do not enjoy raids. I will not do content I do not enjoy for the sake of getting gear.I don't want to show it off in five mans "as soon as possible" i was content to wait for three or four months back in Wrath doing my daily, every day, slowly accumulating enough frost to buy my tier 11. I don't want it fast - i want it eventually. I just need a carrot on that stick that I know i can eventually reach. Right now, blizzard is adamant against providing me my carrot. See, it isn't about what you "think" people should have to do to earn armor. If I can't get a complete set of armor from running dungeons, my preferred gameplay, then I WILL NOT PAY BLIZZARD. That means less subscription money, and that speaks louder than your "B-B-BUT MY EPICS ARE SUPPOSEDTA BE SPECIAL"

You want your carrot? Go run low level dungeons and raids. You said you want gear to look pretty, then go get it horsie.

It makes me happy to see more people leaving the game. As sick and twisted as that sounds, maybe blizzard will wake the fuck up and make tier accessible to non-raiders like it was in WotLK. Or at least give casuals something to do with rewards that aren't recolored rehashed shit, while raiders get all the new shinies. The new quest zone was a joke; I saw the rewards, I saw how little they value their casual players. "Just give em recolored rares, they'll eat it up. toss in a recolored mount too for kicks" No thank you blizzard, my money will go elsewhere. Make your game casual friendly like it was in WotLK and we'll talk about me re-subbing. If it takes another 1,100,000 people to leave to make a round two million, I hope blizzard it will get blizzard to fix their shit. I want to play WoW, but not in an environment where I have no hope for obtaining an armor set unless I'm a hardcore raider.

All the lost subs over the past 2 quarters are all the Wrath babies, like you, who just quit when the shit wasn't as 'casual' as it was a year ago. In case you people have all forgotten World of Warcraft is an MMORPG. The core of an MMO is that it's made for hardcore players. If you want casual, play your fucking XBOX. I don't raid because I have a wife and child and work 60 hours a week. Am I going to bitch and moan because I can't obtain the best gear in the game because of my lack of free time?? FUCK NO!! I hope Blizz continues to lose subs. Not because they'll lose money but maybe so some of the QQ'ing little bitches will gtfo of my game. Btw, I played WoW at the E3 Blizz booth in 2003 and have been playing since release. I've played through all of this game's changes. And I'm not going anywhere. If you don't like the direction they have taken this game... Stop playing, get the fuck off our forums, and for the love of god stop complaining.

What amazes me more is the fact that there are STILL so many players playing this endless loop of copy paste content that WoW has become. Myself being from the upper tier of humanity (based on income and IQ) i just have to assume that it is the smart ones who are leaving first.

Originally Posted by MrShapatsky

TL;DR version:
Be smart

It's like you're a different person and I completely misunderstood your first post. It's NOT you acting superior or arrogant towards people who still play, no sir, its hard hitting, critical analysis.

Just thought I would let you know that although it's not a true set with bonuses. The troll dugeon gear all matches and looks like a complete set.

OT: I think people are leaving now because leveling is so much easier. A lot more people have max levels of every class where as before, in Vanilla mostly but BC as well, it took a long time to max out a character. When some one got tired of their class they could re-roll. This could take months to max your character. Now, you can get BOA's and hit 85 in a solid 2 weeks from scratch. This meens people get board of that character faster. It gets to the point where you have made enough alts that you just get burnt out and don't have anything else to do. Wow world is getting smaller and smaller. Old content, outlands, northrend are dead areas with very few players and the new content is just so fast. It takes more or less 1-2 days to go from 80-85. They need to make leveling slower. More content. Better mixture of raids / dungeons.

Not true, Leveling felt slow and boring at 80-84, it felt the same, same as the last couple x-pacs. I quit in the middle, I don't like my warrior as a main, they have boring utility, no fun tools or anything (may be effective) but its dull as fuck, especially being the most vulnerable melee dps class(particularly in PvE), I try leveling other toon and it literally bores me to sleep in less than an hour or 2, I prefer not having to level again if is going to be such easy garbage crap that takes days to do or heirloom farming.

They gameplay itself though is stale, even at 85, I can no longer stand, the rotation mashing mentality, DPS is more like a mathematical equation and tanking is so stupid, id rather avoid damage not run up and get hit. At least I didn't have to worry about threat in WotLK and just mitigating damage best i could and beating up the boss and good positioning.

In WotLK it took until nearly the end of the game, but I was finally able to get gear that I was denied for not being in a big guild OR being shunned from pugs because I didn't have the LOLACHIEVES or I was unfortunately the wrong class/spec choice at the time and would refuse to change just because idiots didn't understand I knew how to play my class and or spec.

So being able to slowly grind heroics for my gear, made my day. Somewhat.

Oh sure people whine that heroics were to easy, but really, I didn't queue up for a heroic to spend 3 hours in a wipe fest, with undergeared healers or tanks or dps in dps kit thinking they could tank... I spent my money for something to kill time while my friends are offline.

But now? As one of those people who left and you were chortling about?

Well lets see; Dungeons are a pain in the ass to pug. Even the satchel doesn't offer much reward incentive for me. I received so much abuse on my healers I stopped healing pugs and turned to PVP. Where abuse was less actually than pugs and omgasp, actually reportable!

On my DPS, I got tired of not being healed by lazy healers who didn't understand the concept that if you have nearly full mana bar, and dps takes unavoidable damage, please use something cheap and easy to keep my ass from scrubbing the ground.

And my tanks OH LORD NO.My DK and my Pally and my War are now HIDING THAT SPEC. FOREVER.

So that scratches dungeons, raiding and etc from my game time! What's left!

Dailies and PVP! Dailies. Yeah.

I did Dailies for TBC. So fun.

I did Dailies for WotLK. So. Much. Fun.

Blizz: Hey we're gonna design some poorly thought out dailies that will glitch and crash and not work properly, for all you casuals. And for all those with hunters, we threw in pets that will be continually raped/ganked while you tame them, whoo hoo!

So needless to say I was less than thrilled, so I turned exclusively to pvp. And even then? It's not fun. No it really isn't. I want to do more than log on, spend an hour killing people on my hunters or out healing people on my druid as they rage face and nerd rage over how they can't kill me. WoW is hardly fun anymore.

Oh and RealID LFD. Paying for two features that are free otherwise? Yeah. No. Fuck that, fuck the premium.

Oh, but wait, you know what really drove me off finally?

The stupid. Retarded. PoS GM's I kept getting recently. Either not being able to speak english when it is clearly what I write fluently and only in. Not being able to grasp the concept of I could mean something entirely different so shut the fuck up about whining about people who were being abused by past LFD kicking systems or how I am basically told that I can be sexually harassed, insulted, attacked, griefed and otherwise verbally abused in pugs, from a blue, because LOL L2IGNORE and L2DROP GROUP.

Yeah that's a real reason to continue playing wow, isn't it?

You do know they nerfed almost all the heroics to the ground right? There not even a challenge anymore, ZA and ZG were hard for the first few weeks. There's always gonna be a bad pug that's what the kick feature is for if its really bad you leave and re queue.
I did all my daily's yesterday, all except one being ZA/ZG and i had 1 bad group (I was close to my resto druids tier gloves, big upgrade)

I can be sexually harassed, insulted, attacked, griefed and otherwise verbally abused in pugs, from a blue

I highly doubt that actually happened but did you ticket a GM or just go on the forums, cause there's a right way to report that sort of behavior and a wrong way.
Normally if any of that stuff happens people are suspended or even banned for multiple offenses.
A blue wont tell you you can do any of that, though a blue will tell you to report it in game instead of on the forums. Not there fault if you cant type a few sentences or learn how to open a ticket, if it's urgent GM's will act fast pay no attention to the 2 day wait time. I opened a ticket twice to get my toon unstuck during the buggy patch 4.0 and they were responded to within minutes.

So needless to say I was less than thrilled, so I turned exclusively to pvp. And even then? It's not fun. No it really isn't. I want to do more than log on, spend an hour killing people on my hunters or out healing people on my druid as they rage face and nerd rage over how they can't kill me. WoW is hardly fun anymore.

That's what PVP is in every mmo what do you want? PVP is about getting HK's pure and simple.

Am i the only one who thinks the loss in subscribers is due to marketing and due to wow being a very old game? It really hasnt lost that much quality, but the reason isnt because so many people are unsubscribing, people have been doing that since the dawn of the world... of warcraft, but because they arent getting new subscribers. You guys may laugh and think its nothing, but i have not seen a wow commercial since the cata trailer, which isnt as appealing. The ozzy osbourne and mr.t comercial and wow being on a then new south park episode really brought in a lot of customers despite how much you may dismiss the idea of ozzy and cartman bringing in customers. There's also the matter of the start up cost of playing, which is crazy high for a video game right now, it cost $20 for reg wow and bc, $40 for wrath, and $40 for cata. That's $100 dollars just to play the relevant content, with of course having to pay another $15 a month. The other big reason is because a lot of long time subscribers are bored playing the same game for 7 odd years now, and i don't blame them. They might say its cause wow is now too easy, and they cater to casuals too much, but wow isnt that much easier then before. It's because they are better at the game. If you play the same game for multiple years 2 things are going to happen: 1. You're gonna get better at the game, thus making things that seemed hard when you started playing easy to you now. and 2. You're going to get bored of it. 90% of players cant play the same game multiple years straight without getting more and more bored over time.

I'm a 5(err, make that 6) year veteran, and I've quit in April because I'm getting deadtired of Blizzard. Path of the titans, constant boss nerfs, world pvp no longer existant, piss poor customer service, feeding the entitled casuals, I can go on all day, all. fucking. day. I've realized that my audience is no longer the main demograph anymore. It's now the entitled casuals, and the socialhipkids. Have fun playing it. I'm out.

Wow needs hell lot more "Casual" content - that would require total revamp of the game however or add more singleplayer end-game content that are NOT dailies. Nerfed raids, dungeon content can only go so far and it doesnt apply to everyone.

I mean, who the heck would pay 15 dollars month to DO DAILIES everyday? Achievements and alts can only go so far.
If I didnt have awesome guild and werent raiding I would've quit year ago due lack of end-game content.
There are people who doesnt raid or cant do dungeons for either time restrictions or just not bothering (Farm month T12 gear to..run zul'again/normal heroics? lol?)

Making alt is answer, sure but what they are gonna do then? More dailies with dozens of alts and main? Not fun.

Casuals are the ones that bring money to table so they can do raids/dungeons, whether you like it or not. "hardcores" however are loyal customers who are subbed for long time and consume all content. Casuals are masses but sub and unsub randomly, by giving them goals and stuff to do they will keep them subbed for longer. Making daily hub that takes months (or longer for them due time restrictions) is not really keeping them subbed till next patch..

Its really intresting to see what are they gonna try to come up with this.